I had a whoami moment this morning when read Naked Tiny’s most recent entry. (If I were really ambitious here, I would try and track back, maybe I’ll do that later.) Anyway, I was thinking about my father, and the ways that we associate ourselves with our parents. The inescapable parent-alikeness factor.
Am I destined to become a lazy schemer who’d rather read science fiction than actually do any of the work required for my get-rich-quick schemes? Is that really how I see my father? Because I think it describes me pretty well, actually.
Tiny and I have this weird past divergence thing happening. I submit: my father also taught Physics at a university when I was young! That’s pretty much where the similarities end though, because I played on an Apple computer when I was little as opposed to an Atari, and my dad went on to 20 years at a mediocre job in a field that didn’t explode in the 80s and 90s (oven technology) and was subsequently laid off about 5 years ago. Fortunately he dabbled in real-estate, or who knows what pathetic job he would’ve had to accept to make ends meet.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess it’s just history. Naked Marty. This is so far a pretty pathetic attempt. I’ll dig a little deeper.
I never wanted to be my father. I hated him, in fact, mostly for spending all of his time at his rental properties rather than with the family. Or at least that was the verbal manifestation our mother gave to his absence. I have no idea if that’s where he was, or if it even mattered to me. He just wasn’t there, and when he was, he mostly kept to himself and read books. My mother yelled at him for sneaking books to the dinner table and reading them while he ate. (I think I tried that trick once, and she got so upset I never did it again.)
Later on, I hated Dad for different reasons. We didn’t agree on things, and in ninth or tenth grade, I jumped out of a second story window to prove I didn’t have to listen to him lecturing me.
Strangely enough, it was not too long after that we started getting along better. Of course, he was still absent much of the time, and that’s also a murky time in my memory. I think in part because so much was happening. My parents got divorced. We changed houses several times. I was completely absorbed in school friends and getting laid for the first time. I think high school is a blur for most people. I know it was a crazy time for me.
Now I have dinner with Dad (and the rest of the immediate family with the exception of my mother–who shows up later in the evening to pick up Christy) every Thursday night. It used to be at Dad’s place, but recently we’ve moved it to mine. (I’m more centrally located.) Dad and I get along fine. We all get along fine. Things are fine. Things are exceptionally fine.
[~] grid% whoami
grid
Hee. Our first computer was an Apple][+. We got the Atari later. Then the Mac. Anyhow.
That’s the way it is, Marty. The older you get, the less this sort of stuff matters. The separations. The divides. I love my father, I respect my father, I just wish sometimes that he’d love me differently and respect me more. But you can’t always get what you want, sang the big lipped man.