On today's show, side-show personalities and the people who love them.

This is topic that is near and dear to my heart, so I may get a little carried away here. You've been forewarned.

So my family is far from the "conventional" family, if there is such a thing. By "conventional" I guess I mean the Hollywood family. Since I've never actually met a "conventional" family, it's all I have a basis for.

So my family has had a bevy of issues. My mom was server her whole life and has a history of gambling problems, and my dad is a cynic asshole who has created his own world with its own rules that he believes and lives by. Sprinkle in a bit of domestic abuse, and you have a rough idea of my family life growing up.

My mom is a dreamer. She always has been. It seems to be one of the few things that gets her by in life. Shit might get bad, but if she can dream, then there's hope. She's the kind of person that dreams of winning the lottery and buying a house that the whole family can live in. She dreams of big Thanksgiving dinners, and huge Christmas family get-togethers. Big events out of story books where the entire family gathers up and has a great time. All great in theory, but they rarely work out in the real world. She's a great person, when you get her on her own. Without all the issues my dad brings to the table. Though she's not without her faults. She grew up kind of a gypsy, moving around constantly, rarely staying in the same place for very long. She had my eldest brother when she was very young and worked 2 or 3 jobs to help keep them afloat. I came into the picture about 15 years after the fact (and to a different father), but that didn't change matters. She loves her children, and she's been a fantastic grandmother. Better than I could have ever hoped for. She treats her granddaughters equally, and loves them as if they were her own children. In my case, I have a daughter that is half Asian, and obviously so, yet still my mom shows no difference between her and my brothers daughter. That means tons to me. I love her even more knowing that there's absolutely no racial qualms with her. All of her grandchildren are her grandchildren. Plain and simple.

My dad, the cynic, has believed for a long time that his life is doomed. It's pretty obvious to those around him that his life as a child was spent primarily alone. He didn't get a lot of attention as a child and that has caused problems in his adult life. He gets jealous of his children (and grandchildren) for the attention they receive from his wife, and he acts like a child when he doesn't get what he wants. He truly believes that she loves everyone more than she loves him. It's sad really. Here you have a highly intelligent, humorous guy, who breaks down to toddler-like behavior when things don't go his way. Even though his wife has put up with mountains of his bullshit, and countless years of put-downs and insults, he still thinks she doesn't love him.

At this point, who can blame her?

I spend a lot of time around the two of them, and my mom has never stopped trying. Even though it's obvious that my dad is completely hopeless, she keeps trying. That's dedication. My dad talks a never ending river of shit to my mom because of some things that happened in the past. Yet my mom never brings up how he hit and abused her, constantly degrades and demeans her, or how I stopped him from hitting her with a goddamned chair when I was young.

It's utter and complete bullshit for him to think that after all this time, and all the shit he's done to her, for her to stick around and stand by his side, that it wasn't done out of love. People don't stand through all that bullshit just to see how things turn out.

This brings us (in a very abridged route) to tonight. I went over to my parents house to have a sort of "family movie night". I tried to ignore the comments from my dad like "Women never love the men they sleep with. They'll love their children, but they don't love men.", and other ridiculous stand-ins for what he believes his current situation to be. I tried to look past the obvious tension between him and my mother, but it's hard when it's literally palpable.

After the movies, we went out for a very awkward slice of pie. I went, trying to be a mediator. The very same reason I had chosen to come over for a movie night in the first place. Things got really weird, but not out of control. Then they dropped me off at home.

Fast forward to about 2 in the morning.

My mom calls me asking if I could come with her to get a hotel room. I don't know what transpired between the two of them, but it doesn't really matter. My mom needed my help, so I had to step up. So here I sit, in the casino hotel room trying to keep my mom in one piece. I suspect if my mom hadn't called me, I may have gotten a very disturbing phone call in the morning, and I'm too young to bury my mom.

I've told her that I won't let her go home without me. She won't go back to him to figure things out without me there. I need to be there to "keep the peace". I've stood toe-to-toe with my dad before, and I'll do it again. But before where I did it with words, this time I'll do it by force, if necessary. I don't want it to come to that, but I'm no longer afraid of that man. I'm older now, and all I see is a misbehaving child that needs a whoopin' to set him straight. Talking just doesn't seem to do the trick.