The First Clean and the Space Heater

So after a couple weeks, we had let ourselves fall into old habits. There'd be a constant small clutter of stuff around the living room. Mikey was still recovering from his surgery, but he was able to get up, go out and do certain things.

One day I came home from work, didn't have class that day, and I was bored so I decided to do a cleaning sweep.

Everything in the house was perfectly clean when I was done. I decided to take a load off and write a letter to a friend of mine who was going through Army basic training. I brought my backpack out to the living room to get some paper from the notebook, sit on the couch, and write. I did just that. When I was done writing, I put the notebook in my backpack, placed it up against the couch, and started to watch TV.

After a half hour or so, Mikey came home from doing whatever he was doing. He walked into the living room, saw me sitting there, saw the cleanliness, and said, "Do your fucking homework!"

"What?" I responded

"Do your homework!"

"Okay, DAD, I don't have any homework tonight."

"Well then get your backpack out of here, I don't want to see that shit", he yelled as he walked away and out of the room.

I was confused. Sure, I had been used to us being "fake" hostile and cutting each other down, but I hadn't ever experienced him being so angry about something so trivial. Here, I had just spent the whole afternoon putting things away, dusting, cleaning, and polishing the table and stands, and vacuuming the house. And here, I had brought out my backpack when I was done, with it sitting right next to me, and he straight up just yelled at me to put it away in my room, without even acknowledging that the rest of the house was completely spotless for the first time since we moved in.

This confused me, but I shrugged it off. Little did I know, this would be a foreshadow for things to come.

Another day, I was home alone. Mikey was at work, and I had the weekend off. We had mentioned to each other that we wanted to avid using the central air a whole lot, so I brought over a space heater from my mom's. I had the central air on earlier in the day, and that put the heat in the room up to 72 degrees. At about 1am, I was still in the living room watching TV and it had started to cool down, so I brought the space heater and sat it next to me by the couch. Mikey came home at 2am, walked into the kitchen and saw the thermostat. Even though the heat had been off for many hours, but the temperature had held at 71 degrees. For this, he yelled at me for several minutes. Then he walked into the living room and saw the space heater. He continued to yell about how much of a "fucking yeti" I am being cold and still having the space heater on right next to me even though the temperature was at 71.

Unfortunately, I can't remember all of what he was specifically saying. But he was actually yelling for several minutes. He had an issue with iteven though he hadn't been home and I explained to him that that the heater was only on for an hour that day. The space heater wasn't affecting him in anyway, but he was pissed off about me using it.

A few minutes later, he came back out and it was though nothing had happened. He sat down on his chair, had a drink, and began watching TV with me.

That would have been the end of it, but he kept bringing it up. Not just to me, once a day for a week, but that next weekend we had two fridns of ours over. The first thing Mikey mentioned to them when they walked in was about the space heater situation. They began making fun of me for it.

And again, about three weeks later, I had a friend over. A friend Mikey barely knows. When he showed up, Mikey said, "Well, just don't let him turn on the space heater or he'll melt you!"

To begin with, this wasn't even a situation where he needed to yell at me in the first place. If he had an issue with it, he could have simply told me in a civil way. But he chose to yell at me for it the second he walked in the door. He also didn't need to keep bringing it up everyday for an entire week. Lastly, I certainly don't think he is, at all, justified to complain to our friends about it. This really is a NOTHING situation and he blew it way out of proportion.