My beautiful, beautiful boy.
You are the light of my life. No other person in this world means as much to me as you do. I knew ever since I first saw you that you would be my proudest accomplishment. It was fate that brought us together. That bouncer didn’t have to put me in a trashcan, then put that trashcan in a larger trashcan, but he did — and that’s where I found you. You were smoking a cigarette underneath a McDonald’s wrapper. I still don’t know how as a rat you were able to smoke that cigarette, but you did it, and that persevering spirit, as well as a nicotine addiction, are just some of the things you have given to me over our few months together. You were a rat in the trashcan outside of a ska-themed bar, and now you are the rat son living in the cradle of my ska-themed home. So many memories of us flash through my mind. Remember when we came up with your name? We were watching “The Sopranos” together (TV-MA doesn’t apply to children that are also rats) and you screamed the moment Tony Soprano appeared onscreen. Honestly I didn’t even know rats could scream; it shook me to my core. But from then on you would only answer to Tony. That is how you taught me to fear the most the ones we hold closest to our hearts, because one day they might scream as you’re trying to eat a white cheddar cheese puff and you could blow out the back of your jeans in terror.
Tony, my lovely, little prince, we have been on so many adventures together. Remember when you climbed into the toilet and disappeared into the pipes? I didn’t see you for three days. The police couldn’t do anything; even when I told them you were my son, they reminded me that you were also “just a rat.” “Just a rat.” Those words cut me to my core. And when you returned three days later, with a little crown on your head and a newspaper cape on your back, I knew you were more than “just a rat.” You were a rat king. And also my wonderful son, Tony.
Tony, my bristling baby boy, please disregard how my other, human children may act toward you. They are merely jealous because they know how much I love you more than them. They’ve never gnawed through the walls of the house just to have faster routes to my bedroom. They’ve never given my ex-wife scabies in what we decided was “a freak scabies accident.” They’ve never even tried to be anything other than the human children they are — unlike you, Tony, who doesn’t even have to try to be a rat, because you are one, and I love you so much for it. But like I said earlier, I also fear you greatly. But also, I love you.
Tony, and this one’s more of a plea, stop biting me while I sleep. I know you have trust issues, and you are simply testing the bounds of my love for you, but I have gotten very sick on multiple occasions because of what the doctors have called your “sewer rat ways.” But do you know what I say to them, once they have reattached my pinky finger? I tell them, “you shut your damn mouth, and don’t you ever talk to me or my son again.” Do you know why I do that, Tony? It’s because no matter how much you may hurt me, I know deep down it’s only because you love me, and how could a father abandon his only rat son? No, Tony. I will never leave your side, and if that’s because of what my therapist calls “a warped version of stockholm syndrome,” then so be it. Because nothing can match the love a father has for a son who is also a rat named Tony. Nothing.
Patrick Thedinga is a Humor editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at p.thedinga@cavalierdaily.com.
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