My dad and I

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, I’m in Orlando living with my parents for a while. I posted previously about this decision and one of the biggest concerns in it was the dynamic between me and my dad. Now understand, my dad loves me very much. I know this. But my dad is a bull in the china shop of good intentions.

He grew up in West Virginia and is a bit older. He grew up in a world where the man of the house was the decision maker and that was that. As such, I grew up with a fear of argument and even lengthy or heated discussion. Something that has taken a while to overcome in other social settings.

Couple that with my dad being a right wing conservative, a closet racist, a homophobe and all sorts of other things. He also doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. I watched him try to force his best friends (a couple from New Zealand) to gate crash on her (the wife’s) mother while they were back in New Zealand to visit. He was completely oblivious to their body language and the general “fuck off” flashing over head.

He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t believe you when you tell him you know something. He’ll say, “Did you hear about the alligators?” “Oh yeah dad, I heard about them.” “Yeah, 3 deaths in 4 days, blah blah blah blah blah” even when I had told him I knew about it. Now some might attribute this to an attempt to make conversation except he doesn’t make a conversation - he simply talks and talks.

I came down to live with them to help with his business and stuff, and he wants to retrain me on it all. Despite the fact that I’ve worked with him for a dozen years and carried countless hours and such. He just can’t fathom that someone else has a handle on something.

He is also the alpha male that is a cliche. He walks in a room and immediately seeks to control the people and the social dynamic. And so growing up I simply decided it was easier to let him be the alpha than to try and fight him for it, which has caused me years to slowly come out of my shell. To this day I have trouble being the alpha male until I’m convinced that it is what everyone else wants (such as my previous roommates who had trouble making any decisions.)

So this dynamic between my dad and I creates a lot of turmoil for me as I bite my tongue and try to keep the ride as smooth as possible. The fact of the matter is that he won’t be here for much of my time here. He’ll be with mom as she gets treatment, and while I hate that mom is going through this - I am glad that this won’t be a continuous dynamic for seven months or however long I do stay down here.

And lastly, my dad is a pessimist in an optimist’s clothing. He always always plans for the worst. I’ll never forget how we boarded the plan for Germany. He grabbed my shoulder and looked me in the eye to say, “If anything happens, you grab your sister. I’ll get mom.” Uhhh ok. (I was 13 or 14 at the time). Or like how he made sure we knew what to do to get out of the car should a bridge over water collapse underneath us. All that sort of stuff.

Despite this laundry list of complains, please don’t misunderstand me. He is still a confidant and someone I go to for wisdom since he has been through a lot in his life. It’s just all the stuff he does when not meaning too. It drives me bonkers.

Now, how about your father? How is your relationship with him? Could you live with him now that you’ve been out on your own? How much do you clash? Tell me! I’m curious if dad and I are the exception or the norm.

2

my daddy was born & raised in arkansas. he grew up during the depression, so poor that he still has the only store-bought toy he ever owned. it is still in the box, still has the price tag on it. it was too precious to play with.

he may not have emily post manners, but he will go out of his way to be polite (kind) to anybody.

he proposed to my mom by asking her if she would like to spend the next 10 years barefoot & pregnant. when she said yes, he told her he was going to kick the steps away from the house, so she couldn’t get away. 50 years coming up in june.

he worked all his life and managed to put 2 daughters through nursing school and 1 son through to a phd in mathematics (at an ivy legue school).

he is known throughout the neighborhood as “pawpaw”. the go-to man if some toy breaks.

i have seen him put himself between his grandkids and a rattlesnake.

he has told the same jokes at supper for the last ??? years.

he is as close to perfect as a man can get.
i know this sounds like a dull individual, but he is a lot of fun. if he stayed home with us, it was always a toss-up if he was gonna get it fom mama or us.

his “indian name” is “chief cow-pie with wagon track through it”. his stage name is “handsome down-wind roberts - star of stage, screen and laundramat”. he can play any instrument there is.

i can go on for hours about daddy, but i see some of you have dozes off, so i will end with - i love him alot.

3

Oh, beebee! That is wonderful! I’m tearing up over here!! sniffle

In fact, your name reminds me of my Dad’s nickname for me when I was little, “beebah.” Apparently, that’s what I called other babies when I learned to speak…so it stuck. :smiley:

I have lots of stories about my dad if I think about it. And I love him very very much. He only lives a few blocks from me so I see him all the time. I am just. like. him. Seriously. This apple did not fall far from the tree at all.

The parent/child relationship is certainly changing as we get older though. I spend more time taking care of him, even though he is not yet old and infirm. My step mom died last year. I’ve seen the man cry exactly twice. The day my mother left him and he got sober, and the day last year when my step mom died. Otherwise, he’s a tough guy.

It’s funny. My sister is my mother’s. I am definitely Daddy’s girl.

ronincyberpunk, I feel for you. I have a dad that was very much the same way when I was growing up. If a situation could be made worse by Dad’s good intentions, it usually was. Elementary school was fun…

I have only one piece of advice to give you, and that is this:
If it becomes detrimental to you to just put up with the status quo until you get through it, then it is time for you to change the dynamic. Sometimes in a parent/child relationship, that has to happen. Sometimes they’ll remain the alpha male until the day they die.

4

My dad has always been extremely eccentric. He and my mom have been married almost 50 years. That may sound commendable but not really. He was verbally abusive to her. He wouldn’t let her get a job or drive…This was in the 60’s and 70’s. Thing is, he had 3 cars and a truck.

His M.O. with us kids was to tease us until we cried. Needless to say, I would characterize his and my relationship as difficult. I’m 47 years old and I suddenly realized I wasn’t happy growing up.

When I was 18, there were some incidents at home that caused me to be kicked out of the house by my mom. When my dad found out, he pushed me back in a rocking chair…telling me I couldn’t leave…everytime I tried to get up, he’d hit me in the face…In front of my brother and sister.

Everybody in my family still lives in Toledo, OH. I moved to Nevada. Now he’s still living with my mom, who should be in a care facility for her dementia. Needless to say, he’s not doing a good job taking care of her.

When I talk to him, he tries to be nice. I know I should forgive him but it’s taken me years to get over the low self esteem issues I have.

Some people just shouldn’t be parents. I’m sorry this post is so depressing. :rolleyes:

5

My Dad is long-dead, so living with him would involve a lot of digging. Downwards, if ya know what I mean. But no one could live with him when he was alive, including my Mom. He was your classic Cranky Old Bastard: the only delight he took in life was telling everyone how they were wrong and he was right and “why are you getting all bent out of shape, you should be grateful for me for pointing out where you’re wrong and I’m right!”

To this day my sister and I use him as a warning: “You’re starting to sound like Dad . . .”

6

My advertisements are for potty training (3) and cat urine behavior? WTF?

My dad had a public side (fix/build anything, pillar in the comunity/church, willing to help, scout leader, kind to widows and orphans) and a private side (physical,verbal, and sexual abuser, violently angry, critical)
Took me along time to figure out he was the problem and not me. He would say “Honor thy father” and I learned to say “Fathers, provoke not thy children to wrath”. When I left the house after the last time I spoke with him, I told myself that the next time I saw him, he would be in his coffin.
He’s been dead 11 years, and I still struggle to get him out of my head. I am glad I got some of his fix/build anything abilities. I’ve tried to be a better parent to my kids than he was to me.

7

I want to hear more about this alligator rampage.

8

My father was as close to perfect as he could be. Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, my father told his children, including the girls, that there was nothing they couldn’t be if they wanted it and worked for it. I never heard him and my mother exchange a cross word, and they were married nearly 50 years before his death. One day I didn’t come directly home after school and my mother was frantic. I didn’t get in trouble from him because I hung out at school, but because I made my mother upset. They were a true team. He would stay up all night making those emergency school projects - a working catapault, a pyramid, a full-sized wood duck house, but he always made us work alongside him. He would take me to job sites on the weekends, and show me how his buildings were coming along. He cried at sappy movies.

His father was old-world European “I am the man, I’m the father, the husband, the boss.” He always said he wouldn’t be like that, and he wasn’t. He overcame his up-bringing. My grandfather bullied him and he worked for him, until one night when he packed up the whole family and moved us 150 miles away. He left the retail world, which is what he knew, and joined my mother’s brother’s construction company and made a new life for all of us. He was the best man I know.

When he was diagnosed with lung cancer (I always feel compelled to say he was a non-smoker), he said he’d fight it until his last breath. Through chemo and radiation, the cancer moving to his brain, he never complained. At the end, teh hospice nurses would say " he can’t last the night" and the next day he’d still be struggling, even in a coma. He was strong and brave and kind and courageous and loving.

StG

9

My dad died in 1992, and even though I respected him, loved him and LIKED him and miss him, once every so often, I catch myself talking to him.

That doesn’t scare me so much as when I hear him talk back…

10

(this is long. if you’re reading every post, you might want to skip this one. it doesn’t add much to the party.)

My dad, while not abusive, is extremely difficult to live with.

He’s an alpha-male type too. He’s a tyrant. He teases mercilessly. I think he used to tease all of us kids, but he doesn’t do it to the younger two anymore becuase they don’t give satisfactory responses. I’m an easy target- I let it get to me, take it to heart, and sometimes let it make me cry so I’m easy to bully.

He’s insane. His mood changes with almost no provocation and you never know WHAT will provoke him. If he’s in the kitchen making dinner, he’ll throw a hissy fit if nobody in the family goes in to offer help, but it’s generalized- he throws an even bigger hissyfit if someone gets too close to the kitchen and offers help (“gets in his way”) and it’s directed at that person, so nobody DARES go near him. He throws screaming fits and hands out punishments if anyone (anyone but the youngest) asks anything of him (like, “can you please give me a ride to school?” or “can I go out with my friends?”) so we rarely ask him anything and then he acts like we’re total idiots for not asking him for things.

He has a terrible “if it hasn’t happened to me, it can’t happen” attitude. It’s his opinion that mental illness doesn’t exist and the only thing wrong with me is that I’m a selfish attention whore. He doesn’t understand that not everybody is him.

He’s HORRIBLE to waiters, cashiers, and everybody he comes in contact with in public. When people pit complete strangers, they’re usually pitting the type of person my dad is. He’s just a self-entitled jerk. It’s embarrassing to go places with him.

Just yesterday he did something that just boggled my mind. I’ve seen him do this before, but I still don’t get it. He was in the kitchen doing nothing in particular and went to throw something away. The trash can was virtually empty and he threw his garbage ON THE FLOOR. “dad… why don’t you throw your trash in the garbage can?” I asked. “I threw it in the can. it just fell out. I don’t have time to do everything for everyone else.” He does that kind of thing all the time. he’s taking full advantage of having kids to clean up after him.

This seems to be a pretty classic dad thing, but I learned early on that if I want homework help, I should ask sopmebody other than my parents because if I ask my dad how to spell “purple” he’ll give me a history of literature in Greece and then tell me a synopsis of a movie he saw in Turkey or Nepal (if I ask my mom, she just doesn’t know or knows the wrong answer.) He also insists on telling me stuff I already know or stuff he’s already told me. It’s generally not even true. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started realizing he’s not the smartest man in the world and most of the stuff he tells me is made up.

He’s the worst kind of Catholic (I know not all Catholics are like this)- he blatantly hates anyone not like heim. He’s racist, homophobic (to the point where he tried to take me out of ballet when I got a gay male teacher) and hates anyone of a different religion and is very quick to judge people.

I think I’m not what my father wanted in a child. I don’t know exactly what it is that he DOES want, but I’m not it. I’m not like he was when he was a kid. I’m difficult in a way he doesn’t understand. He skipped school and snuck out and did drugs and smoked and got expelled from high school. Perhaps he could deal with me if that were my problem, but instead of a wild child, he got a sad one or a sick one or whatever I am.

He’s not all bad, of course. Nobody is. He is very smart and he’s extremely devoted to my little sister. He’s interesting and sometimes a bit eccentric. He might make a good doper, really. He’s the only person I know who would appreciate a gift of chocolate-covered crickets. He loves my dog and is good to my cat. He puts money in the collection basket and buys gatorade from my dance studio (the money goes to my dance group) and used to take communion elderly people who couldn’t make it to church and did a stint as a chaplin at a children’s hospital. He’s a good man- just a difficult father.

11

My Dad wasn’t abusive. But he was a perfectionist: other people could do wrong, but “his” whatever? Oh no. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t admit to being wrong, that he could; it was that he wanted everything to be absolutely perfect (he’d had lessons in several foreign languages but didn’t speak any because he couldn’t do it well enough by his standards). The closest he ever came to congratulating me on grades was “well, looks like you CAN do something right when you set yourself on it!” (100% in a college course, next highest grade was in the 70s range - FFS, what does it take to get a “good work” around here?).

Mom was so set on “not fighting in front of the kids” that she gave us the impression that they were sort of like an upside-down hydra: two bodies, one mind. This was a reaction to her parents’ own marriage (for 74 years they’ve been the kind who like to fight so they have an excuse for making up) but too often it made us feel like nobody was on our side. Oh, and HER dad is sexually abusive, something which she hid from my Dad even when it affected us kids. I think that if she’d been less intent on Folding Herself Under Dad, both Dad and us kids would have been a lot better off. She somehow made all of us less.

One of my most… revealing moments regarding religion was when I realized that the commandment is “honor thy parents”: not LOVE. Honor. Ok, that I could do even at the worst times. But love? It’s hard to love two people who always, always, always and with the best of intent make you feel completely worthless. I consider that as one of those Details That Show Priests Ain’t Totally Dumb.

Things have gotten better since Dad died. We’ve done a lot of work Reeducating Mom and now she actually treats us like grown-ups most of the time; “parents, do not provoke your children” is one of our mantras to her when she does Certain Things. But it ain’t been easy, let me tell ya…