3. Plain Cruelty
My mom once got me a gag scratch-off lotto ticket for Christmas. On it, I had won something like $100,000 – one of the grand prizes for a $20 ticket, so it would’ve been a huge payout at my age of seventeen. She sat through me calling my father (divorced parents), other friends and family members telling them how much better things would be for the next few years, especially college, and that they would all get a fair share.
This went on for about twenty minutes until she told me it was a gag ticket, as she burst out laughing. I left her house Christmas morning on the spot, storming out blind with rage. On the way home, I had to call everybody back and explain what happened, near tears. It took me almost all year to forgive her. I can’t recall anything worse that has happened to me. It was one of the most intense mixtures of feeling simultaneous hate/rage/sadness I’ve ever felt.
