A Thousand Dads Before You

I had an obsessive, desperate compulsion: from the time I was small, I called everyone Dad. When I was five, walking through a crowded flea market with the group-home director, I dropped to my knees, wrapped both arms around a strange man’s calf, and sobbed, "Daddy!" A suffocating crowd gathered within seconds. That man turned out to be a wanted child trafficker; my clingy, shameless scream was the only reason the police caught him before he slipped away. When I was eight, a prospective adoptive mother came to the agency. She knelt, smiling softly, and asked me to call her Mom. Instead, I grabbed her knees and yelled, "Daddy!" at the top of my lungs. She stared at me as if my gears had come loose, stood up, smoothed her wool skirt, and told the director with genuine regret, "I’m a woman. I simply can’t be a father to him." And then, through a state genetic registry match, my biological father finally tracked me down. "You're my son," he told me, his hands trembling as he gripped my shoulders on the day he brought me home. "You don't ever need to call anyone else Dad again." I nodded, obedient and quiet. Right then, my stepbrother, Cody, burst into theatrical tears. "Dad, right before you walked in, he whispered to me that this house is his now. He said only he gets to call you Dad, and that Hannah and I aren't allowed to anymore." My stepsister, Hannah, hardened her expression instantly, looking at me with sharp, cold disgust. "Don't push it. You just stepped through the door, and you already think you can hoard him all to yourself? Who the hell do you think you are?" I shook my head violently, frantic, trying to explain that I never said anything like that. My father’s warmth vanished. A vein pulsed along his jaw, and he snapped at me, his voice sharp and low. "From now on, you call me Sir. Or Uncle. We need to break this sick habit of yours before you ruin this family." He didn't know it then. When I finally stopped calling him Dad, it would tear his sanity to pieces. ... It happened again three weeks later. I bolted down the front steps of our apartment complex and threw my arms around Mrs. Higgins, an elderly neighbor resting on a bench under the shade of an elm. She suffered from advanced dementia. When I looked up and called her Dad, she beamed so wide her dentures slipped, turning to the courtyard to shout, "Look at that! God blessed this old woman with a boy after all!" A cluster of neighbors erupted into snickers, exchanging that pitying, sideways look reserved for the neighborhood lunatic. My father marched over, his face purple with humiliation, and wrenched me backward by the collar of my jacket. "Ian, are you out of your goddamn mind?" he hissed through his teeth as he dragged me up the stairs. "Can you stop humiliating me in front of every living soul on this block? Get inside. You aren't leaving this apartment until you learn how to behave." He shoved me into the windowless storage pantry and turned the deadbolt from the outside. The dark was suffocating. Confined spaces had always been the match that lit my neurosis on fire; the panic crept up my throat like black water. I sat on the cold linoleum, my fingernails digging into the drywall, scratching the word "Dad" into the paint hundreds of times until my skin rawed. When the silence became too heavy to bear, I slipped my phone from my pocket and dialed the first sequence of numbers that came to mind. "Dad," I whimpered into the receiver, my chest heaving against my knees. "I'm sorry. I promise I’ll be good. Please let me out. Please." It was a 911 dispatcher. Hearing a child gasping for air, claiming he was locked in a dark box, the operator flagged it as a severe domestic confinement case. Squad cars pulled up outside ten minutes later, sirens painting the living room walls in red and blue. My father and Hannah were completely blindsided. When the officers forced the pantry door open and helped me stumble into the light, my father stood there, pale and defensive. "Officer, I swear to God this isn't abuse," he pleaded, his voice thin. "He has an episode. He runs around the neighborhood latching onto strangers, calling them Dad..." The older patrolman looked at me, taking in my hollow eyes, my chewed lips, and the trembling in my knees. He turned back to my father, his gaze stern. "Attachment disorder. Compulsive external bonding usually stems from severe developmental trauma and a profound absence of safety. He’s your flesh and blood, sir. Spend time with him. Build trust. Don't lock him in a closet." My father nodded bitterly under the officer's gaze, but the advice slid off him like grease. The moment the front door clicked shut behind the police, the fury detonated. "What is broken inside your head?" he roared, towering over me. "People look at you like you're an idiot, and by extension, they think I am, too! Tomorrow is your first day at the new high school. What are you going to do—call your classmates Dad?" I kept my chin pressed to my chest, whispering, "No..." I only called people Dad if they looked at me with softness. My father waved his hand in disgust, cutting me off. "Not a single person. If I hear one report of this nonsense, you'll regret it." The next morning at school, my AP Physics teacher handed back my test with an approving nod, murmuring that my approach to the mechanics equation was brilliant. A hot rush of dopamine flooded my chest, and before I could swallow it down, the word slipped past my lips: "Thank you, Dad." The student aide gathering paperwork by the podium froze, dashed out the door, and within an hour, the hallway rumor was that I was the teacher’s illegitimate secret child. The poor man spent his entire lunch period explaining himself to the principal. Later, in fourth period, my deskmate, Ruby, noticed I hadn't eaten lunch and slid half of her spicy beef jerky onto my notebook. My eyes stung with gratitude. "Thanks, Dad." Ruby’s face flushed crimson. She shoved her chair back with a screech. "What the hell is wrong with you, Ian? I’m a girl! I’m not your father!" The students around us howled with laughter. Word traveled fast; soon, half the row realized they could trigger my weird tick. Kids started tossing granola bars, mints, and spare class notes onto my desk, chanting, "Call me Dad! Come on, say it!" I sat there, small and agreeable, saying the word to each of them in turn. In exchange, my desk accumulated a small mountain of snacks and neat study outlines. Across the room, Cody sat watching, his jaw clenched so hard his cheek twitched. "Are you guys serious?" he scoffed loudly. "Playing house with a freak?" I thought he felt left out. I turned to him, earnest and hopeful. "Do you want me to call you Dad, too? I don't mind. You can be my Dad number one thousand and three." Cody shoved his books into his backpack, knocked his desk aside, and stormed out. That evening, he laid the entire scene at my father’s feet, embellishing every detail. My father sat on the edge of the sofa, the shadows under his eyes carving deep hollows into his face. He looked at me, his voice dangerously quiet. "Ian. This is the end of the line. One month. If you haven't purged this sickness from your system in thirty days, I..." He trailed off, unable or unwilling to voice the threat. He just let out a dry, defeated sigh and walked into his bedroom, closing the door between us. I stood in the dim foyer, the cold seeping through my socks. I pulled out my phone, opened the calendar app, and drew a red circle thirty days out. My father didn't understand. The three foster homes before him had given me the exact same ultimatum. "Stop it, or you leave." When I couldn't stop, the social worker’s sedan would inevitably idle in the driveway, waiting to collect my garbage bags of clothes. This time, I decided I wouldn't wait for my real father to throw me out. When the circle arrived, I would leave on my own. Unable to control me at home, my father went to the school administration. He demanded an intervention: if Ian calls anyone Dad, that person is forbidden from speaking to him for the rest of the day. The front office issued an official memo to our homerooms: "...In support of Ian’s developmental progress and behavioral rehabilitation, we ask for full student cooperation. Any student encouraging or baiting Ian into inappropriate familial titles will face immediate out-of-school suspension." Under the threat of suspension, the game evaporated overnight. The makeshift "fathers" who had traded snacks for a laugh suddenly ducked their heads when I walked past. Ruby passed me a small folded note beneath the desk divider: "Ian, just call me Ruby, okay? Don't say that word anymore. The teachers are watching. You can't let this ruin your life—you need friends." I smoothed the crease of the paper, completely at a loss. Why did wanting a father mean I was insane? My grades were at the top of the class. I didn't steal, I didn't scream, I loved my teachers and wished my classmates well. I only searched for fathers because I had spent sixteen years without one. What crime was there in that? Still, no one wanted to risk their academic record for me. Whenever my mouth began to form the syllable, someone would clap a hand over my lips. For three straight days, I didn't say the word once. My classmates breathed a collective sigh of relief, treating me like a recovering stroke patient, patiently teaching me to say their first names instead. Then came Thursday afternoon. A couple of varsity athletes from the adjacent hall drifted into our doorway, snickering. "Hey, isn't this the charity case who barks like a dog for a bag of chips?" one sneered, tossing an unopened protein bar at my chest. "Must be nice having zero dignity. Here. Call me Dad, let’s hear it." The bar landed in my lap. I looked at it, then up at his mocking, cruel grin, and pushed the bar back across the desk. I had rules. I never gave that title to cruelty. The boy’s smile curdled into embarrassment. Just as his hand balled into a fist, Hannah appeared in the hallway. She took in the scene—me sitting there, the athlete looming, the discarded snack—and her expression twisted into venom. "Ian! Are you doing this again?" she barked, loud enough to echo off the lockers. "Do you have any idea how repulsive you look?" I opened my mouth to defend myself, but the athlete cut in, sneering at Hannah. "Honestly, you guys should pull him out of public school. Dragging the rest of us down with his psychological freakshow? He's a liability." The surrounding crowd chimed in, a chorus of thoughtless teenage malice: "Seriously, if he's unhinged, send him somewhere he can get fixed!" "If you don't take him home, our parents are calling the school board about classroom disruption!" A school's greatest terror is organized parental outrage. By late afternoon, the district email chains were buzzing. Hannah dragged me back home by the wrist, slamming the front door so hard the glass pane vibrated, and poured every drop of poison into our father's ear. "How are Cody and I supposed to show our faces at school?" she cried. "The whole town thinks our entire gene pool is contaminated!" My father stared at me, his eyes bloodshot, his voice a jagged whisper. "Ian... are you trying to force my hand? Do you want me to put you in a behavioral camp?" I shrank into my sweater, terrified by the cold finality in his gaze. "I'm sorry, Da—" "Don't you dare call me that!" he shouted, slamming his palm against the kitchen island. "I don't have a son who acts like a lunatic! You want to survive in this world? You need discipline. You need isolation. Maybe that’s the only way you’ll learn." Two days later, he drove me three hours outside the county lines, stopping before a gated compound hidden behind tall pine trees: a private residential reform academy for troubled youth. He handed over a hefty wire transfer to the intake director, along with strict instructions: complete non-engagement. "Keep him fed. Make sure he doesn't break a bone. Other than that, no comfort. No conversation." When I saw him take his car keys off the reception counter and turn toward the glass doors, terror ripped through me. "Sir! Please!" I lunged forward, catching the sleeve of his coat. "Don't leave me here. Please, I can't... I need someone." My father's shoulder went rigid. He didn't turn around. "It’s for your own good, Ian. When the word loses its power over you, you can come home." My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. In a frenzy, I pulled my cracked phone from my pocket and held it out to him. "Look—every person who was ever kind to me, their numbers are in here. Sir... I swear, just let me send them one text to say goodbye. Just let me tell them thank you, and I’ll never say the word again. I swear it." He snatched the device, his thumb scrolling aggressively through the contacts. His face darkened into disgust. "Ian? You have over a thousand contacts saved as 'Dad' with numbers attached?" He stared at me with pure revulsion. "You are truly sick." He raised his arm and hurled the phone down onto the ceramic tile. The screen shattered into a spiderweb of dead pixels. I dropped to my knees, frantically scooping up the jagged shards of glass, the sharp edges slicing into my palms. When I lifted my head, the glass doors were swinging shut. His parting words hung in the sterile air: "Ian, no one in their right mind wants to be a father to a broken kid like you." He was right. On my first day inside the concrete walls of the dormitories, I called out the word over a hundred times. Not a single staff member blinked. The attendants had their orders: every infraction earned one hour of sensory solitary confinement. For the next four days, I was sealed in a bare, white box. Except for a tray of bland mush pushed through a slot twice a day, I saw no human faces. No voices. The isolation began to gnaw at the edges of my brain. Panic turned into sensory hallucinations, which gave way to a dull, humming madness. Just like when I was a neglected toddler, I began assigning the title to inanimate things. My first companion was the melamine soup bowl on my tray. It had a small, jagged chip along its outer rim. I stared at that chip for hours, my chest aching with an unbearable, tender sorrow. I wiped my runny nose with the back of my sleeve and whispered to the plastic: "Does it hurt, Dad?" "It's okay. Even with a chipped edge, you're still a good bowl. Everyone has cracks somewhere..." I murmured to the bowl for nearly two hours, running my thumb over the damaged plastic. Finally, the collection attendant rapped impatiently on the steel window flap. "Hurry it up in there! It takes you two hours to eat soup?" My eyes lit up. I scrambled to the door, pressing my face against the wire-mesh opening. "I’m done, Dad!" I pushed the empty bowl through the slot with trembling hands. "Look, I finished every bite. Was I good, Dad?" Through the small slit, I could only see the attendant's heavy, broad torso. She let out a harsh, mocking bark of laughter. "I’m a grown woman, kid, and your real father abandoned you here for being a freak." My stomach dropped. Her voice was ugly. Cold. She didn't deserve the title. I reached forward, trying to pull the bowl back into the room. "Give him back. My dad wouldn't leave me." As long as I had enough fathers, one of them was bound to stay. The matron sneered, wrenched the bowl from my grip, and threw it against the concrete floor outside. The hard plastic shattered with a sharp "crack". The sound felt like a bullet through my skull. The memories after that were fractured shards: the sudden roaring in my ears, me clawing through the food slot, grabbing her uniform shirt, screaming and thrashing like a rabid animal. Then came the heavy boots. The zip-ties. They dragged me into the disciplinary wing and strapped me down to a heavy restraint chair. When the taser’s electrical current surged through my torso, the agony stripped every thought from my mind until only one instinct remained: shrieking for my father to save me. The attendant held a mobile phone against my ear, her face twisted in cruel satisfaction. "Go ahead. Tell your old man how well you're doing." I pressed my bruised cheek to the receiver, sobbing so hard my ribs felt fractured. "Dad... Dad, I'm sorry. Please come get me. I swear I'll never call anyone else Dad, just you. Only you. It hurts so bad, Dad... please..." There was a long, hollow silence on the other end of the line. Then, my father’s voice came through, cold and flat. "Ian, stop the theatrics." "The director told me everything. You’ve devolved into calling kitchenware your father now. If you keep spiraling like this, I won't bring you home—I'll have you committed to a state psychiatric ward." I wanted to scream that a psych ward would be heaven compared to this living tomb. The line went dead. Back in the quiet warmth of his suburban living room, my father pinched the bridge of his nose, staring out the window at the manicured lawn. He looked back at Hannah and Cody, his voice heavy with doubt. "Do you think... did I go too far? He sounded terrible on the phone. Maybe I should pull him out and find a private therapist instead." Hannah didn't look up from her iPad, flicking through a shopping app with an irritated scoff. "Dad, this is his signature move. He plays the tragic victim the second things don't go his way. If you fold now, you’re just validating his sickness." Cody sniffled on cue, rubbing his eyes until they turned red. "Yeah, Dad... if he comes back like this, Hannah and I are the ones who suffer. He wants your love all to himself, but what about us? Don't we matter?" My father sighed, walking over to wrap Cody in a protective embrace. "Alright. We leave him there. You're right. The last time I caved, he made a scene with that senile woman on the lawn. This has to stop." He didn't know what happened after that call ended. Because I had physically assaulted a staff member, the attendants dragged me into an unlit solitary confinement cell—the "cool-down box." It was barely two feet wide, concrete on all four sides. No bench. No room to sit. You stood. During the first hour, my knees began to shake. I stared into the impenetrable pitch-black, whispering, "Dad... my legs are burning. Can I just sit down for a minute?" The ceiling intercom crackled, static-laced and metallic. "One hour down. Save the whining. We aren't your daddy." By the second hour, my lungs couldn't expand properly against the narrow walls. The dark pressed against my eyeballs until phantom colors danced in my retinas. I raised a trembling hand, finding the cold concrete, and dragged my index finger across the wall, trying to write "DAD". Skin against porous stone leaves no mark. It felt like writing in thin air, meaningless and invisible. So I pushed harder. I dragged my finger over the same rough surface again and again until the nail split, until the friction wore away the epidermis, until the warm, metallic stickiness of blood began to lubricate the stone. When my fingertips left dark, glistening red strokes in the dark, a small, cracked smile broke across my face. "Dad." I moved to the next patch of wall. Third hour. Fourth hour. By the seventh hour, the blood had congealed under my torn nails, but I couldn't stop. My vision blurred into total gray. The sensory deprivation finally severed my tether to the world: I couldn't see my hands. When I forced my vocal cords to vibrate, no sound reached my ears. A sudden wave of primal panic hit me. I clawed at my own throat, trying to feel the vibration of life, trying to know if I was dead or alive. Nothing. Right before the final shadow pulled me under, I knelt on ruined knees, dipped my mangled, bloody fingers onto the dusty floorboards, and blindly scratched five final words into the concrete: "Dad." "I don't need you anymore."