Don’t try this at home

I got drunk last night — what else was there to do after everyone went to bed (besides watch the Demitri Martin special, which I totally did and which made me sad that I can’t have him for myself)? — and wrote my dad an apology note for calling him “bitter.”

Here’s what I want to trumpet to the universe and beyond — I love my father more than I can put into words. None of my strained metaphors could ever express the admiration and appreciation I have for him and the things he’s done to make my life better, more structured, less stressful, more loved, without major cares, etc. My father is a good person, down to every undetectable molecule swimming around in his blood.

I do not doubt this. I cannot doubt this. During my entire life, I have watched him do The Right Thing countless times. I have watched him help people out regardless of their color, creed, attitude, location, language, whatever. He is selfless, thoughtful, generous, and righteous. If I was chilly, he would give me the shirt off his back to wear and the shoes on his feet to burn for additional coziness. He is a nice guy. He will cut up with you and try to make you laugh even if he has never laid eyes on you before and will likely never see you again.

So my brain does flips trying to figure out why a man who would go out on a limb for any breathing being can say certain things involving superiority and inferiority and Nature and The Way Things Are that seem to me to be obviously, blatantly wrong and just awful, beyond contempt.

It hurts. It delivers a swift and lasting punch to my gut to confront these realities time and time again.

My father seems annoyed-yet-bemused by my take on the world. To him, I am pitifully cute and naive. He accuses me as well as my mother of wearing “rose-colored glasses,” and having an entirely too optimistic take on the world. Which, he tells me, will get me killed or worse.

What’s odd is that my dad must not know me very well if he thinks I’m some kind of optimist. If anything, I’m indifferent. Where he sees an interracial couple and might think “Oh Lord, think of the CHILDREN!”(an actual argument I’ve failed to deflect adequately), I simply think, “Meh.” I’m not sure what kind of internal works you have to possess to actually care about the pigmental makeup of a couple of breeders, but it escapes me why I should care.

Is it a generational thing? Is Gen Y really so self-absorbed that they’ve ceased caring about the practices of their brothers and sisters?

Good.

BUT, despite knowing in my heart that my father is a good person, I have to stand up to him on this particular issue. I have never been more sure in my entire life that I have Truth and Goodness on my side, and that they’re rooting against his standpoint. It’s just that basic to me, that straightforward. To him — and to countless others, no doubt — it’s a little more grey, a little more debatable. Actually, it’s not even debatable. There is Truth that he believes that I find comtemptible.

That blows my mind. And makes me sad.

There is no compromise in this situation. I’ve tried. I’ve said, “Okay, so let’s agree to disagree” more times than I can count. But my dad holds the ultimate trump card: Years. To him, his fiftysomething years of observation make my twenty-five years look like chumps. Nothing I see or experience can possibly equal what he’s seen by sheer virtue of my green-ness.

I disagree with this outlook, naturally.

But that’s the point at which you have to stop arguing with your father and kiss his cheek, telling him that you love him despite his crazy opinions. And, if you really want to make sure he gets your point, you write a letter to him at 1 a.m. telling him you want him to be happy and accepting of the world’s perfectly flawed beauty.

He’ll think you’re being insincere, or that you’re trying to provoke another argument.

But you’re not. You’re just Daddy’s Little Girl trying to understand, trying to love, no matter what.