We all have issues with our parents, but you don't see most of us suing our 'rents over that time we couldn't choose between two baseball cards and we hemmed and hawed for nearly an hour until we weren't allowed to have either one. Not so for Brooklynite Bernard Anderson Bey, who has sued his parents for $200,000 because he says their lack of love led to him being homeless. "I feel abandoned," 32-year-old Bey told the News outside the homeless shelter where he's currently staying. "The relationship I share with my parents is not a beneficial one. Not a loving, nurturing one." Bey is very specific in the lawsuit as to what they should do to make up for their neglect: mortgage their Bed-Stuy brownstone in order to "purchase two cost effective franchises such as Domino's Pizza." As we always say, the family that orders a 5-5-5 deal together stays together.
Mind you, Bey's parents haven't been entirely heartless despite, um, being such heartless creatures in Bey's eyes. They did give him money recently when he asked, though he wasn't happy it was provided "painstakingly." But when they wouldn't let him use their shower, it left him "feeling filthy and disgusting, cold, hungry, unloved and beaten by the world."
In the suit, Bey claims his father beat him as a child, called him “bastard” and “motherf--ker” and did drugs in front of him. him.“Defendant Bernard Manley [Bey's stepfather] informed the plaintiff he was entitled to nothing, which is true,” Bey wrote in the suit. “I am not entitled to receive anything from an asset he owns. I only thought he might find pleasure in seeing his children become successful.” If Tony Soprano could have strong armed his parents via legal extortion into being proud of him, it certainly would have been a much less interesting program.
His parents are less-than-sympathetic at this point. “He’s not related to me. He’s not my son,” Manley told the Post. His mother had some advice for him: "I say go get a job," Vickie Johnson told the News. "He's never had a job a day in his life. He's looking for money so he doesn't care who he has to step on."
“He’s 32 years old," she told the Post. "That speaks for itself. Welcome to America. Everyone in America has the same opportunity. Don’t blame the parents at this point. The choice is yours. You’re an adult.” We feel like this could be a jumping off point for a discussion about the perpetual adolescence of the American male in our society...but no, this is just a story about one guy's dream of opening his own Domino's franchises, and spread cheesy bread love to all the sad, jobless adult-aged children around the city.
