My Old Man Was an Alcoholic

You know how in manga and stuff, there's that trope of a single-father household where the dad is an alcoholic, a hopeless case, and when he gets drunk, he becomes unreasonably violent... that kind of upbringing?
I always thought, man, those people have it rough, but when I really think about it, that was my house too.

As far as I knew, my old man was an alcoholic. By the time I was old enough to notice, he was already getting unreasonably angry when drunk. It was especially bad whenever the Giants lost, and my sister—the one you know—apparently got hit a lot.
I often heard them arguing in the middle of the night, with my old man and my sister throwing things and shouting at each other. I would calmly analyze their respective arguments and learned how to act smart, like the typical, insufferable youngest child.

After my mom died, my sister inevitably got into a fight with my old man and ran away from home, so for a while, I lived alone with that drunkard of a father.
I wasn't hit, though. I want everyone to rest easy on that front. It's trendy these days to call your parents 'toxic parents,' but I don't think of my parents as toxic.
Especially now that I'm an adult and I work every day to support my own family, I understand how incredibly hard that is. While I might think, 'Well, it was your choice to get married and have kids,' if they hadn't, there would have been no room for me to exist as a human being. Sure, raising a hand against your child isn't exactly praiseworthy behavior, but my mom and dad were only human, so what can you do? I'm not such a perfect person myself that I can go around badmouthing others.
But when my old man was drunk, he would forget everything we talked about at night. Even if we had an important conversation, by morning, he wouldn't remember a thing. Since he'd start drinking the moment he got home and keep drinking the whole time he was making dinner, there was never any good timing to have a serious talk.

However, I was smart. It was a terrible, cunning kind of smart, so I learned that if you need to discuss money, you have to do it while he's drunk. Better yet, you have to get the cold, hard cash right then and there.
See, because of things like this, you can't tell if the parent is the toxic one or if the daughter is the more dangerous substance.

Then one day, my drunk old man started saying that lately, he'd been seeing a scrawny black kitten on his way to work.
This was a huge opportunity.
Ever since I could remember, I had wanted to live with a cat. I had given up many times, or for some reason ended up with a dog, but I hadn't truly given up.
The old man brought it up himself. 'Poor thing, it's so skinny and still so small.'
So, of course, I steered the conversation toward bringing that child home. 'If it's that pitiful, we have to rescue it. That's why it's appearing in front of you, Dad.'
My drunk old man fell for the story perfectly. Once you get him on a roll, he's all yours.

The problem, however, was that the cat in question wasn't right in front of us. If things stayed as they were, come tomorrow morning, he'd just say, 'Did I say that? I don't remember,' and that would be the end of it.
Being the cunning person I am, I immediately made him write a written oath. Here it is.

Damn drunkard!

Anyway, my sister apparently found it while cleaning the living room for the first time in twenty-five years, so I'm posting it here.
Everyone, please be careful not to get tricked into writing strange oaths while drunk.

By the way, in the end, my old man never found the black cat. A friend and I went looking for it, and instead of a black cat, we adopted a mackerel tabby from the grandmother at the local candy store who fed the cats nearby. It wasn't particularly skinny, and it had a mother and brother, but apparently, it was having trouble getting along with its black siblings and the ginger tabby that looked just like its mother, so I think I did a good job.
This cat, named Suzu, grew attached to my sister, and my old man eventually died at the end of his alcoholism.

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