One time my dad was at his camp with 13 year old me and my 9 year old brother on Thanksgiving day.

He looked out the window and saw a deer, and started whisper yelling at both of us to shut the fuck up and get a gun. He tells my brother he's going to shoot his first deer today. Opens the window above the kitchen sink and hands my brother the rifle. My brother is 9 and not even remotely close enough to see out the window. So Dad pulls up a makeshift step stool and brother climbs up. He's still too short but on his tippy toes he can angle the gun down enough to make it work.

Little brother lines up the shot and pulls the trigger. The gun kicks back and throws him off the footstool and into the roaring wood stove, 2 feet behind him. The scope kicked back and gave him a perfectly round incision in the middle of his forehead. There's blood everywhere and he's crying because he was burnt. But dad again tells us to shut up and get outside to track the deer.

So out we go. For hours, following this damn deer trail. I'm whining and pouting because I'm cold and hate hunting and don't understand why I even need to be a part of it all. We finally find the deer and dear dad starts to gut it immediately. He pulls out the heart and tells me to hold it. I laugh skeptically. He screams at me to hold the fucking heart or cut the deer up myself. So, I hold the heart. I'm a 13 year old girl, standing in the middle of the woods in my dads oversized hunting coat and his boots because we had to run out the door, holding the heart as far away from my body as I possibly could, sobbing obnoxiously with blood streaming down my arm and the heat of the heart giving off steam in the cold air.

I'm not too sure on the details of the day after this point, but I know my mom wasn't even remotely phased with the story when she showed up later in the day with dinner.

And that's the story on why I don't eat meat or talk to my dad. And why my brother has been called Harry Potter for the last 17 years.