Paying For What He’s Done
When I was 15, my mom started dating a man she met on a dating website. I didn’t like him the first time I met him, and two months later he moved into the house.
About three weeks after he moved in, he took my skateboards, self-built half pipe, ramps, BMX bike, ice hockey gear, and many other things to the dump one day while I was at school.
He said he did this because he didn’t want all of my stuff cluttering up “his” garage. Maybe two months later, he punched me in the stomach for the first time because I got up from the dinner table without asking to be excused.
From there, it escalated into full-fledged beat-downs for the smallest perceived slight to his authority. One day, he decided to take my extensive Pokémon card collection, even more extensive comic book collection, My Game Boy, and PS2 with all the assorted games,
and my fantasy and sci-fi book collection and got rid of it all because “15 year old boys should be playing football and baseball, not being a nerd playing with Pokémon cards and reading comics and books.”
I would like to add that he was a middle school teacher, and in his off time refereed and umpired local middle and high school sports games. My mom never intervened, and in fact acquiesced when he demanded that she stop giving me lunch money,
because “the little jerk will just spend it on comics and other gay stuff.” One day, I took maybe $3 and change out of his change jar so that I could buy a slice of pizza and some fruit punch during lunch at school, because I was tired of being hungry.
My twin sister was always a bit of a jerk, and frequently blackmailed me into doing her chores from a young age. I was fed up and refused to do something, so she told him what I had done. His retaliation was breathtaking.
This man actually called the authorities and pressed a larceny charge against me, and once the officers had left, he proceeded to beat me senseless. At that point, I ran away.
When officers found me and returned me to my home, I found out that he had been trying to talk my mom into sending me away to military school or something of that nature. I ran away again, and between having run away several times and the larceny charge, I ended up turning 16 in juvenile detention.
I spent the next couple years miserable and afraid, frequently contemplating suicide. Once I was out on my own, I didn’t speak to my mom for several years. We eventually reconciled, and by that point they had married.
I was a lot bigger than I had been as a young teenager, and had gotten into weightlifting, so he no longer acted like he was going to punch me to make me flinch, much less actually hit me. We basically avoided each other for the most part.
Then my mother found out that she had stage 4 cancer, and no longer wanted to waste any of the time she had left with him. She had a lawyer draft up a separation agreement whereby he would receive a set amount of money upon separation, and would have 45 days to retrieve his belongings from the house.
A while ago, he had spent his entire inheritance in six months and then had to sell his mother’s house that he grew up in in order to settle his debts shortly before they started dating. My mother bought the house back from the bank before they married.
She allowed him to keep the house and he moved back into his mother’s house. My mother passed about nine months after their separation, and despite the agreement she had been allowing him to come and get his stuff piecemeal. I put an immediate end to that.
He was past the deadline to remove his personal effects and they were now mine to dispose of as I saw fit. So I got sweet, sweet justice.
I sold his baseball card collection (around $14k) and his autographed sports memorabilia (roughly $11k) and also sold all of his woodworking equipment, along with several finished pieces of furniture that he had made ($6,500 I think).
I kept his mother’s engagement ring (platinum band, three diamonds, roughly two carats), wedding band, his coin collection (I also collect coins) and some tools and other odds and ends. Now comes the real fun. Around a month ago, I finally saw him at the grocery store.
As he was leaving, I approached him. I told him I had sold his collections as he was pushing his cart out towards his car. He reacted exactly as I expected. He took a swing at me multiple times. I already had my phone ready to dial 9-1-1.
Several of these punches missed and the ones that did connect didn’t have much effect because he’s nowhere near as strong as he was 20 years ago in his forties, and I am no longer a skinny little 15 year old.
He continued to try to punch me as I spoke to the 9-1-1 operator, and was actively ramming his grocery cart into my new Toyota as the officers pulled into the parking lot. He was charged with assault, communicating threats, and destruction of property.
As a result he lost his job (and pension) at the local middle school, and because he had never learned how to save money while married to my somewhat wealthy mother, he ended up having to sell his mother’s house.
My nephew, who was on the football team, made it well known to his friends that he not only had just been convicted of assault as well as other charges, but that he had also beat me as a child, causing several parents to call for him to resign from refereeing and umpiring for local sports games.
My niece and my girlfriend’s much younger sister are enrolled at the middle school where he worked, and say that he was not only universally disliked, but when he came up to the school to get his belongings, he made a big scene and ended up crying as he was leaving.
At least that’s what they’ve heard from the kids who were attending summer school at the time. His son, who he was equally abusive towards as a child, refused to take him in or help him out, so he ended up having to take a job as a cashier at Wal-Mart so that he could afford the rent on his little trailer in an absolutely awful neighborhood.
Even though that Wal-Mart is not the closest Wal-Mart to my house, that is now the only place where I go grocery shopping or to purchase anything that I need. I purposely stand in line longer than I need to just so that he can be the one who has the pleasure of ringing up my purchases.
The first time I went through his line, he attempted to ring up multiple items more than one time to overcharge me. When I called him on it, he said that I was mistaken. I asked for a manager, and the manager believed him that it was an accident, but he learned that he can’t get away with that.
The second time, I made sure to be as nice as possible and had to ask for a manager because he was overwhelmingly rude. The people in line behind me backed me up and he got in some trouble for that. Every time I go there and step into line, I see him die a little bit inside, and it gives me such satisfaction.
Sometimes I’ll say that I’m paying with exact change, and as I’m about to hand him the money I’ll say “Oh! I didn’t realize I had (rare coin from his collection) in my pocket! I guess I’ll use my credit card.”
I just sold his expensive ratcheting wrench set, and so on Monday when he works again I’m going to go buy my daughter one of their better above ground pools, and as he’s ringing it out tell him, “I know that (daughter) is just going to love this pool. It’s not like I would have ever used those expensive ratcheting wrenches anyway.” Story credit: Reddit / Kveldson