His dad went away to Colorado and never came back.

1:47 PM 2/13/11

I will make this short because I'm getting ready for work.

When Curtis was a baby his dad moved away to Colorado and never came back. Curtis told me he tried to convince his dad to come back or at least visit once in a while, but he couldn't convince him. He still lives out there in Colorado, too far away to visit. Curtis only visited him once, if I recall correctly. I've been to Colorado once too, many years ago, and we flew on a plane on a trip for a school competition that I was in. It took a long time. This is not a trip that you can make very often.

So I feel bad for Curtis about this. I know that I miss my parents down in West Virginia. But it's not that far away, and I can go visit them if I only take a couple days off work.

That feeling of helplessness that I had - "you'll do whatever you want, and you don't care what I want, and I can't make you change your mind" - that is how Curtis feels about his dad. His dad won't come back even if Curtis begs him.

He wrote on facebook a while back, to his dad, that his dad SAYS 'I love you,' but he doesn't show it - he isn't part of his life, he can't see him in the real world, he can't hug him and touch him and hear his voice every day - Curtis himself didn't write it in so many words, he just basically said something like 'you say you love me but you don't do anything about it' or something like that.

His dad said 'I love you' again on Curtis's birthday and I think it probably triggered the same feeling again, the 'I wish you would do something about it then instead of staying far away' feeling. This prank is the kind of thing you might do if you wanted to say, 'Hey, dad, do you even give a shit?' I'm guessing it might have been directed at his dad. My feeling of helplessness and frustration is nothing compared to Curtis's feelings about his dad being so far away and not being part of his life.

I just wanted to mention that because it makes this kind of thing more understandable. I'm guessing he wants to see if his dad will give a reaction. If you had a kid, wouldn't it shock you to see that they had put tattoos all over their entire body all of a sudden? You'd react to it and you'd be really shocked and upset about it even if you liked tattoos. It would be very surprising. So I think that's who he wanted to get a reaction from.

So I got the 'fallout' from something that wasn't directed at me.