From my last blog post ... felt the tension coming back home tonight. And I didn't appreciate My Fucking Father taking the rice I so nicely and dutifully (like a good son! See?) gave him and putting it aside. That was a power play: I will trick you into believing I accept your gesture, but then I'll disregard it, and you, and shove it in your face. Asshole.
I had to relieve the tension. I had to. I wasn't a chatty Cathy -- I think I transmitted through my body language that I was not going to be the loquacious type after what happened this morning -- but I knew I wasn't going to be belligerent and raise holy hell. I have no job and no future; why at am I going to do, move?
My Fucking Father set me up, and I had to cut the tension with it. His lead-in, dip-his-toes-in-the-water question came to clear up what he was seeing on Undercover Boss, namely what does the company feature on the show sell? I answered clothes, not with an easy tone, but not with a hostile one, either.
That was good enough for My Fucking Father to come after me again, but he soft-pedaled this time. No overt mention of me "sleeping late" (I didn't, remember that). Instead, with a smirk indicating he thinks he's got one over me, he asks me, "You don't want to make money, do you?"
"I'm desperate to make money," I replied.
"Why don't you like to go into business?" My Fucking Father asked. And this is where I thought I had to diffuse what I thought was a ticking time bomb serving as the centerpiece of the dining room table.
I launched into a compliment. And, I want to be clear, this is something I truly feel about my parents. "Do you know the one thing I admire about you two?" (They didn't know what "admire" meant, but they let it go.) "You made your own business, and you have no boss except your customers."
Those words didn't get them on my side per se, but they didn't yell at me. I don't think they would've yelled at me tonight anyway. They said something slightly condescending, and so I laid out another concession: "I need to go back to school."
"For what?" My Fucking Mother asked.
In the past months they've said I should go into business or pharmacology, but of all the things I've been thinking about -- and again, I haven't been thinking about this seriously -- this was the time to stake out a little latitude for myself. "Accounting."
"Why?" My Fucking Mother asked. Damn, her and her stupid questions. And I so I laid out some "facts" -- that it's a growing industry and that the starting pay is good. Never mind that I heard a radio report saying that robots could take accountants' jobs in the future.
"You've got to go to class as soon as possible," My Fucking Mother said as my parents cleared the table. My Fucking Father, by the way, didn't say a peep after I told him my plans.
So, yeah, now I'm down in it, aren't I? I made them a promise, so now I'll have to keep it. Oh, sure, I've made promises before and broken them without any serious consequences. But things have changed. My folks are moving on. Moreover, the environment I'm now living in doesn't make stalling a hospitable outcome. I don't have any money. I don't have many prospects. And I'm still yo-yoing between temp and seasonal jobs. You know, maybe I really should go back to school.
Oh, who am I kidding, I'm not. I'll just disappoint them and justify it by going to bed at night knowing it's a cruel and unfair world, please don't kick me out because I won't survive out there. I would probably waste the tuition money anyway.
I should've shut my mouth. I can't deliver on this fucking promise. Besides, My Fucking Father will just yell at me some other time. ...
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