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My dad was an alcoholic nearly his entire life. Highly functional, very quiet and non-aggressive or violent, but an alcoholic.

He very rarely hit us, and when he did, it was harmless cuffing about the head and shoulders, never really making contact, with one exception: his class ring.

Let’s say I shoved my sister, and a ruckus began that brought my dad onto the scene. He would talk to you very slowly in a really low and gravelly voice while he advanced on you: “What...did...I...tell...you...about...fighting...with...your...sister?”

To this day my brothers and sisters still laugh, when we recall this, because my dad would usually mix some kind of epithet in there, and we all recalled being called a “dumb bunny”. In our memories, it is hilarious. We look at each other today in amusement and befuddlement wondering at that. What the Hell is a “dumb bunny”? (My dad very rarely swore, but did say things like “Jesus H. Christ” when particularly angry...)

Anyway, you would back slowly away until you found yourself in the corner, and then dad would take three or four ineffectual swipes at you, mostly hitting you on the shoulders and maybe one glancing one on the head as you ducked and weaved (without trying to let on that you are ducking and weaving)

Then he would tell you to go “upstairs/outside/downstairs/to your room” or whatever, and you had to walk by him to leave.

This was the most uncomfortable part.

As you squeezed by him to leave him standing there, you knew it was going to come. The anticipation was far worse, though what was coming next did indeed smart.

So you walked by, and as soon as you were by him with your back to him, his right hand would flick out like a Muhammed Ali jab, and in a motion reminiscent of the snapping of a towel, would whack you right in the occipital region of your skull.

It was his Holy Cross ring, where he had gone to a V-12 program to become a Naval Officer in WWII. It had a large red stone on it.

That stone never hit with much force, but in the same way a wet, snapping towel to the butt really stings, this did as well. We would grasp the back of our heads with both hands as we quickly walked away, feeling his stare burning into our backs.

When we were younger, my mother would make us go upstairs and wait in our rooms for our father to come home.

We dreaded the sound of the front door. After the door closed, you could hear them talking in low tones downstairs through the vents, even though you couldn’t make out a single word.

Then my father would mount the steps.

As he ascended, mixed into the steady, upward ‘clunk-clunk-clunk’ of his officer’s shoes on the wooden stairs, you would hear the “clink-clink” as he undid his belt buckle, and the light hissing sound it made as it slithered out of the belt loops.

The tension and fear grew.

And then, to completely psychologically shake you to your 8 year old foundations, he would fold the belt in half, and give it two or three quick, sharp, terrifying,snaps. He did this by grasping the folded belt in both hands, bringing them together (causing the folded belt to bow outwards in the middle with each side away from itself) then rapidly moving both hands away from each other.

The two sides of the leather belt would slap against each other and cause you to visualize a sailor tied to a mast being whipped to a bloody pulp (this was my 8 year old imagination at work)

When he entered the room, you were psychologically finished. He would admonish you in that low, threatening voice as he slapped the belt ineffectually against the sides of your legs.

The belt never bothered us when he held it, it was his terrible, intimidating, low voice that was terrifying to us. Then you would get the ring.

My mother, however, was another story. When she got angry and took the belt to us, she did it all the while shrieking with heated fiery emotion that can only be provided by a specific combination of Italian and Armenian blood being mixed together. And she hurt like Hell. When she came at us with the belt, it was like the fury of Medusa, and she meant it, not like my dad, who did it mostly for show.

Heh, one time, I used some kind of brass religious artifact to mix paint by color paints in, and didn’t clean it out, so the paint all hardened in it and discolored it. She went berserk, beat us with the belt, and when nobody came forward to admit who did it, she snapped.

She said, “That’s it. I can’t take it any more.”

With all six of us lined up there, she picked up the phone and called “The Orphanage”. We heard her wail to the person on the other end that “she couldn’t take care of us anymore” and wanted us to all be sent to “The Orphanage”.

We blubbered “Mom! Please! Don’t send us to “The Orphanage”! We’ll behave! We won’t cause any more trouble!” She relented and said she wouldn’t send us.

Today, we roar at the spectacle of my mother dialing a number (which was probably the number that had the time and the temperature) to arrange our banishment to “The Orphanage”!

God, how I miss my parents. They tried so hard to keep us in line, my poor mother doing it much of the time when my dad was away at sea.