お父さん: Dad
This week, we read a lot of things about dads.
Which was interesting, because it gave me something to
compare my relationship with my dad with. Of course, Brad Manning’s “physical
relationship” (Manning 144) with his father and Sarah Vowell’s “[incapability]
of having a conversation [with her father] that didn’t end in an argument”
(Vowell 153) are not normal relationships; they even verge on being unhealthy. However,
these things are defining characteristics of their relationships, and play a
part in each author feeling “less challenged than loved” (Manning 148) by their
respective fathers.
The defining characteristic of my relationship with my
father is its bipolarity. I often complain about the fact that my dad yells at
every little thing: I’m not wearing socks, I dropped my pen, I don’t charge my
phone the right way. At the beginning of the school year, we had a pretty long
debate about my driving rights; I argued with rules of the state, yet he
maintained that there are rules of the house. We can have some pretty heated arguments.
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed with hatred for my
father, and I often express my frustration vehemently to my friends, so I think
they have a slightly distorted opinion of him. Because as much as I hate him for
his constant harsh nagging, I love him for his easygoing, humorous nature. It
seems kind of paradoxical that a man who is such a stickler for the position of
my chair and the length of my hair also willingly gives me money with no
questions asked and allows me to take care of my own education (neither
privilege, of course, do I abuse). And we always laugh good-humoredly over his
unintentional English blunders, and look at funny baby and/or cat photos on the
Internet together, and compare heights (I’m starting to grow taller than him,
which could make for some awkward family photos in the future).
Even though many times, in the heat of whichever
argument decides to be our topic for the day, I find myself consumed with anger
and frustration, under any normal circumstances, I’d think of my dad and smile.
I guess all I can say is that the average of our experiences leans more towards
the happy side, just as with Brad Manning and his father and Sarah Vowell with hers.
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| Eleven-year-old me and dad. :) |
Aww this is such a cute post relating to your dad. It ties in nicely with the pieces we read last week. I agree that our mood greatly affects what our opinions of people are. If we are mad, we tend to think of more badly of the person and vice versa. :)
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