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When I was about 16 I asked my dad, “John,” I have always called my father by his first name much to his embarrassment since I was a little girl, “how come I always have to go up the mast to unbraid the spin halyards in the middle of the goddamn ocean, at fucking night even? I’m not only your least favorite child, I’m your least favorite person on this boat. You and Old Man Mike have been in two fist fights in the past 20 years, the last one ending with one of you getting stabbed in the palm and forearm with a broken beer bottle.“
“How do you know about that,” he asked, waving his hand in front of my face, the other one without the scar, like he was erasing my memory. “Well Sweetie,” like real obnoxious-like, “you’re the smallest one onboard and we trust you to do it right.”
“So, if I got really fat, I wouldn’t have to go up the rig anymore? You’d send someone smaller?”
Silence. And no one woke me up at 4am after the third peel, they sent my brother Pete up the mast.
And that’s the story of how I never had to go up a mast again and grew the ass of a 40 year old black woman with 6 kids.