Thanks Dad

Once again I feel really irritated recapping one of these life-forming events. 

Initially I thought it was frustration that going over these before still hasn't been enough, but I think another potential reason is that I haven't been over these since I let myself start feeling anger. Maybe that is why the previous rounds weren't enough.

It makes me angry that this happened. It makes me angry that it affected me so much. I did not think I was currently angry with my father, but here is anger. It might be old, but it is still accessible.

Here we go.

I like symmetry. Because my birthday is on the 17th, my 17th birthday was the one I was looking forward to the most: 17 on 17. There are ways in which 16 or 18 could have made more sense, but what's the point of being a big nerd if weird things don't interest you?

I only mention that because it made it worse. 

Previously, I remembered it as happening on the day before my birthday, but this happened on Saturday, and the internet tells me my birthday that year was on a Tuesday. I remember that next morning that was not my birthday really clearly, and then there must have been a lot of stuff that was uncomfortable that I don't remember at all.

I did not want to practice driving with my father. We had been clashing more as I got older, and I was already scared enough of driving without adding my fear of him to that.

My fear of driving largely had to do with the understanding that I could cause harm if I messed up. I could hit something. 

My fear of my father was largely this tension about things you couldn't do and areas you couldn't cross, but also it was cultivated. He liked being scary. There was a line he repeated from a Cosby record all the time: "The old gunfighter, Jack."

I had completed driver's ed already, and I'd had a fair amount of practice. I still felt very nervous about it, which is probably why I had been 16 for almost an entire year and was still not licensed. Obviously I had a lot of work and activities going on, but also, practicing with my father just seemed like a terrible idea.

I know this hurt his ego -- he thinks he is a good teacher (I disagree) -- but initially he agreed that I could practice with Mom for a while before I started driving with him. 

When I tried my first session with Mom, the car wouldn't start. I'm guessing it was vapor lock, but there was an aborted practice session. 

The Saturday before my birthday, Dad wanted me to go around the block. It did not seem like a good idea, but neither did disagreeing with him. I got in the car and he stayed on the outside, and this time it started right up. Great. 

It was parked on the street. I drove past three houses to the top of the cul-de-sac, but was having trouble navigating the circle, and could not get around this other car parked on the street. 

I don't know how relevant this was, but all of my other previous experience had been in an automatic, and the Colt had a manual transmission. It was definitely jerkier. Anyway, I hit the car. 

There's one fear.

I wanted out of the car. Dad slammed the door back and I know he was going to hit me, but people were coming out of houses. The man whose car I hit was very nice, there was no damage, but I got out of there and walked back home and closed myself in my room. I successfully avoided my father for the rest of the day.

If that were all that had happened, I think I could have gotten over it. 

The next morning I got up early and Dad found me in the kitchen and told me that he couldn't believe how stupid I was, and that he was ashamed of me. 

From then on, he just didn't talk to me. That lasted from January 1989 to July 1991. 

That border had been crossed, and that's what was on the other side.

On the plus side, I never had to drive with him again. That was successfully off the table. 

On the minus side, the hangups I had about driving got a lot worse, and it was a deep source of shame as well.

I used to feel a lot of guilt about the strain it put on my parents' marriage, because although he did not try to throw me out then, when I went away to college he wanted to turn my room into an office, and Mom didn't let him.

I feel less guilt about that now because as far as we can tell his second affair had started already by this time. I think the long-term cheating was ultimately more damaging.

At the time, it felt pretty clear to me that it was an issue of control. That is why we had been clashing more. In a way, his giving up on me gave me some freedom. It also made being at home unhappy, and tense, and talking about family awkward and talking about driving and not driving even more awkward. 

In discussing it with a friend years later, she was surprised that he would call me stupid, because that's the last thing I was. I thought that was a weird reaction, because how much do people worry about the accuracy of insults when they are trying to hurt you? However, it may be worth noting that when my inner critic sounds off, "stupid" is always right near the top of the list. I think the order it goes in is "Fat, stupid, ugly, weak, worthless"... I may be forgetting some. 

I guess I knew that if I got into a car with him, something like that would happen. Later, after we were speaking again, I worked very hard to keep things smooth, because I felt that if we ever fought again, we wouldn't recover. That came true too.

Well, it's a little more complicated than that, but more on that next time.