Growing up, my grandfather was the comic relief for my family. He always had the sappy jokes on hand, could always turn a statement around, and would put a smile on anyones face regardless of the situation. One day, my father, Greg Mitchell, decided to tell me, “Remember Kent, the man you see is not the man I grew up with.” I didn’t know how to take that when my dad first told me, so I just said okay and went on with whatever was going on. Throughout the years, that statement has always been in the back of my mind, and I soon realized what he meant. What happened to my grandfather would also happen to my father.

I grew up in a small, resident run town called Dracut. A farming town where there is little to nothing to do. If you want to go to a mall, get in the car and go to a different town that’s at least fifteen minutes away because there’s none in Dracut. We have two grocery stores that are a two minute driving distance away from each other if you prefer Market Basket over Hannafords. If you want a haircut, pizza, booze, or Chinese food, then come to Dracut because we have about half a dozen of each on the West side. On the East side, it’s mainly houses and non working farms. One of the four elementary schools reside on the East side, while the other three are spread out around the West side of Dracut. In the past ten years, if you drove down Lakeview Avenue, the main road, you’d see construction on a major building everywhere you looked. The fire station, the library, the town hall, and a completely new high school. All of this construction was paid with non existent money which was gained from either borrowing it from other towns or firing teachers because we don’t have enough money to pay them. And if someone started off a sentence with, “Did you hear about…” then everyone else in the town would hear it soon enough. It’s a town where you know almost everyone, but almost everyone knows you.

My father knew almost everybody. He’s a general contractor. He runs his own business. He knows how to do construction, demolition, electric, plumbing, you name it. He’s the all around type of guy. Because of this, he likes to be the one in charge, hence why he runs his own company. He’s a hands on type of guy and he doesn’t care who works with him; as long as the job gets done, he’s happy. He also doesn’t like stopping short on a job. He will start at six in the morning and go till seven at night if he needs to finish a roof. If his equipment is up there, he wants to only take it off once. “I don’t give a damn if we have to be up there all day. I’m not going to make a trip twice if it only has to be done once,” he says. He loves telling stories about his work day. No matter where we are he absolutely adores reliving his work day, even if it sucked. He complains about his workers, says what he finished in that day, what he still has to do when he goes in the next day, and the nice things he does for his workers such as buying them a dozen jelly sticks in the morning.

I’ve had the great pleasure of working for my father. It’s almost the equivalent of visiting the Museum on Construction while doing hours of physical labor. Sure, it can be fun when I’m just standing there for a few hours while he’s doing everything for himself. I’m almost positive someone said to never work for your parents, and I now see why. He makes you move as fast as Speedy Gonzales, lunch breaks happen when a certain part of the job is fully finished, and if you are ever caught on your phone he will break it in two. But he has this one line that he always says, whether he’s on or off a job site. “No no no no, let me show you how to do it.” The amount of times I’ve heard him say this throughout my life could easily fill a book. He says it to show that he knows exactly what he’s doing, and he wants everyone to know that he could do it better and faster than anyone else can. Not to be an asshole and gloat, but just to show that there’s nothing you can do that he can’t.

He isn't always a tough ass though. When I was younger, he used to get angry and my sisters and I for being spoiled brats. We would get spanked on the butt and off to our rooms we went. When we got older, we got a bigger deal of that. My sisters were as spoiled as two girls could be and I was just a little b**** about everything that I would always over react. My dad would get mad at us, yell, and we would call him horrible as we ran to our mother. I’m glad that I decided to grow up fast though after one incident. When I was in sixth grade, my father took my sisters, some of their friends and I out to lunch like he always did. He treated every kid like they were his own and never let them use their money. He was a dad for anyone that would hang out with us. At lunch, the waitress came over and we went in a circle like every restaurant does, saying our order and moving on. It got to me and I asked for a cheeseburger club with no tomatoes, lettuce, mayo or bacon. My dad simply asked, “So you want a cheeseburger on toast?” For no reason at all, I gave him attitude. He told me to get outside, now. We went outside, he took me by my shirt, lifted me against the wall and said “If you ever embarrass me like that again, this will be the last time you ever come out with us, do you understand?!” I nodded and he dropped me as he angrily said, “You can come back inside when you stopped crying.” Mind you, I love my dad to death and I’m honestly glad that happened that day. If it didn't, I wouldn't of grown up and realized my many mistakes. Sure, he’s yelled at me in the past and I've cried, but this time it was different. I have no idea why this one time affected me so much, but since that moment, my dad and I have only gotten into arguments practically every two years.

As I said before, I've had the great pleasure of working for my father. Most times it’s Hell, but that’s because I asked to go work with him all by myself. One time, I had a friend come along. I wake up one freezing morning in March of my Sophomore year. My dad is always up before me, because he will drive me to school and then go straight to work. As my dad is in the shower, I get a call from my best friend Jared. Jared is the kind of kid where if you saw him, you’d think he’s a wanna be basketball player. He is a semi tall, semi fast, and semi smart Puerto Rican. His parents were the first generation to come to America, so the generation gap between him and his parents is as big as the Grand Canyon. He has pointy features such as his chin and smile, and you can tell it’s him coming from a mile away when he is blasting Kanye West through his headphones. He says to me, “Yo Kentalent! You ain’t goin to school today ‘ight?! The new COD Zombie map is out and we playin’ it ALL DAY! Get ova’ here!” I had no other choice since he hung up right after saying the most uneducated sentence I’ve ever woken up to. COD is a video game, short for Call of Duty. It’s a first person shooter where you’re put in a war and you go through major battles. They have a side mode called zombies, where you must survive as long as you can with a few friends and kill zombies. As the rounds get higher, the zombies get tougher. It’s a fun way to kill time if you don’t want to do your homework. As my dad jumps out of the shower, I tell him, “Hey, you can go straight to work, I’m going to walk today. Jared wants to meet me halfway.” He looks at me like I have three heads and utters, “It’s freezing cold and you want to walk with the Frickin’ Puerto Rican? Okay, have fun, dipshit!” He chuckles and walks out the door, getting into his enormous Chevy Suburban.

As white as the snow on the ground and as tough as a thousand bulls, this truck was a foot longer than it’s little brother, the Tahoe. It could easily fit seven and you could squeeze a whole clown family in with that. He was proud of the size and power of this car because no one would hesitate to move out of his way. He pulls out of the driveway and I follow close behind. My house is right down the street from the school, and Jared lives even closer to it. I reach his house and he bursts out the door without me even going to knock. He runs to me and says, “Okay, we can’t stay here Kuntle. Is your home empty because my Paps is still here!” I said that we can go there, but have to be careful because my dad could go home any time. We start to head over back to my humble abode as we keep turning our shoulders to see if the white mammoth is driving down the street. As were passing a few houses, still covered in wet snow that’s trying to melt away, an old man was outside shoveling the slush off of his driveway. He looks at the the Frickin’ Puerto Rican and I and says, “Hey boys, isn’t school the other way?” We awkwardly laugh and make some bullshit excuse that he obviously didn’t believe. He just continued to shovel the drive.

We should've known that was a sign to head to school, but we didn’t listen. We got to my house and ran up to my room. I turn on the Xbox 360 and throw in Call of Duty. We are freaking out as it loads; maybe it was the adrenaline of skipping school or that we were truly that excited for a video game, who knows. I buy the map pack and it pops up, ‘Thirty five minutes until download is complete.” We groan, but go to make food. After we scarf down Doritos and Red Pepper Hummus, it’s complete. We begin playing as we yell and laugh, enjoying every part of killing the undead. After an hour, we hear a car pull into the drive. It’s my father, who else? We panic because we have no idea where to go, but we jump into my closet and sit on top of the over abundance of shoes I had. After five minutes, he’s gone. We continue playing with our new adrenaline that we got from almost being caught, but sure enough, he’s back. We just hide in the closet again, thinking it’s no big deal. Half an hour passes. Jared and I begin to get restless and start making noises as we stretch our legs and laugh. Soon enough, my closet door flies open. My father gives us the stupidest look, chuckles and says, “What in the holy mother of f*** are you two morons doing?” We have no clue what to do other than awkwardly laugh. He laughs too and says, “Get up knuckleheads, you’re coming to work.” We were dreading it because Jared knew how awful my stories sounded. As we get to the job site, we notice it’s a half burnt down, two story barn with a huge construction dumpster in front of it. My dad looks at us and sternly says, “Go up there and throw out anything that’s burnt. If you find something cool that’s in tact, you can keep it. Have a ball.” It was probably the best day I’ve had working for my dad.

When my nephew was born, that’s when I noticed the change in my father. He wasn’t so happy the first time he found out, considering my sister just graduated high school half a year prior and that she was partying all the time. After my sister found out and decided to tell my parents, my dad got my sister and went over her boyfriend’s house to discuss the situation. After much tension, they decide to keep the baby and Kelsey will live at her boyfriend’s house. My dad was pissed for the longest time about the whole situation until time came where Kelsey was about to pop. She had the best baby shower I’ve seen, had a lot of support from family and friends, and couldn’t be more lucky to be able to move in a place where she won’t be alone. A few days before Kelsey went into labor, my dad randomly got admitted to the hospital. Till this day, no one knows truly what went wrong except that his gallbladder failed and that his chances of surviving were slim to none, since there were only 200 reported cases of his problem with only around 50 survivors. When Kelsey went into labor, I stayed for my father’s sake even though it was four in the morning when Mark Jr. finally popped out. The first time my dad was able to hold him when they both got out of the hospital was probably the happiest I’ve seen that man in many years. I haven’t seen that smile except in pictures when I was a baby. In that moment, I knew what my dad was saying about my grandfather. When he said, “Remember Kent, the man you see is not the man I grew up with,” he meant that when the grandkids were born, he changed his whole bad guy act and became the lovable grandfather. It was the same thing with my dad. As soon as he saw Marky, he turned into the man I haven’t seen since I was six. I admire to be my father, except for the miserable labor job he has and the short temper.