My Father In A Flash

“People are supposed to aspire to become their fathers, not shudder at the thought.” ~ Veronica Roth

My dad doesn’t like me very much.

Or in fact at all.

Apparently this one time when I was a toddler I did something so heinously manipulative that over a quarter of a century later he still hasn’t come to terms with it. He can’t even see me or evaluate me as an adult person so long and so dark was the shadow cast by this one terrible event.

Every attempt I’ve ever made at having a genuine conversation with him he’s always brought back round to, ‘it’s just like when you were two – and you’re still just as manipulative.’

And in a sense I suppose he’s right.

I’m now, at age 30, more or less exactly as manipulative as I was as a 2 year old – i.e. – not at all.

You see in order to be manipulative people need to have some sort of a filter system, a space in their brain where their thoughts are considered before they speak them out loud.

And I really, really don’t have one of those.

It’s condition I inherited from him.

Although his is worse than mine. He’s also pathologically incapable of considering his words after he’s spoken them.

Which is why he has no idea that; when I told him that a group of EDL thugs started on a bunch of my friends, for no better reason than we were trying to have a nice afternoon watching some rugby in the sunshine and weren’t remotely inclined to take part in their rampage, sorry, peaceful gathering, he wasn’t supposed to defend the thugs; that he was never supposed to entertain the idea that it could ever be justifiable for someone to take a pop at his daughter.

No idea about that, and no idea why we don’t speak to each other anymore.

Inspired by this week’s WordPress writing challenge.