This will be a story about Bob rather than a letter, but his words were still heard. Loud and clear. It was Christmas of my senior year of high school (only 7 months after the Prom Episode). My older Mercury Topaz had a radio but no cassette player and that is what I got from my father (and soon-to-be stepmother).

Nice gift. I was pretty excited to listen to tapes which sounds crazy, because today we’re beyond cd’s and moved on to digital music.

So my father, being the genius that he is, decides to schedule an appointment at Best Buy on Christmas Eve to have this new cassette player installed. Only the second biggest shopping day of the year folks! So he meets me at the store and they tell us it will take about 3 hours. We go eat lunch nearby, mess around and come back only to find out they haven’t even started yet (imagine that!?).

This is when my father’s temper starts to show it’s true colors of red with a trace of blue running through his forehead. Next, we walk around the store after the service man got an earful and told us it would be up next.

As I’m skimming through all the cool new cassette’s I can buy to listen to now, I hear our name on the intercom to come back to the service bay. My father got there before I did and it’s never a good sign when you can hear someone yelling on the other side of a steel door.

Apparently we needed to purchase some extra piece and my father is angry because the salesman guaranteed him it would require no extra parts when he purchased it. (Come to find out later my father also told him the wrong vehicle he was buying it for.)

Several more hours of hanging out in Best Buy on Christmas Eve go by…..very slowly. I’m beginning to ponder if it was even worth it. Then the familiar voice calls our name again. The problem now is that they don’t have all the pieces they need, so they won’t be able to complete it today and can’t put us back on the schedule for 3 weeks (because most people who bought car stereo equipment for gifts scheduled their installation for AFTER Christmas).

That didn’t go over too well as you can imagine. In a waiting room full of people my father turned psycho. You know the kind of psycho who threatens service workers. I didn’t hear what the guy behind the counter said, but my father yelled a phrase I will never forget: “I’m going to come across that counter, rip your f**king arm off and beat you to death with it!”

The guy called for a manager and security while he still had 2 arms. In my head I’m imagining police will soon follow. It’s sad that the people in the waiting area all got up and left, probably scared for their own lives (and arms)!

There was a lot more yelling between the time security was called and the time security arrived. In which my father took to his advantage by continuing to threaten this young kid. I just wanted to hide. But where? They had my car.

It was all worked out several hours later with no police intervention. My cassette player was properly installed about 3 weeks later and I haven’t been back to Best Buy since. I can only imagine in their break room there is probably a picture of my father from the security camera that says - CAUTION: May Rip Your F**king Arm Off & Beat You With It!

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