Hippylostintime’s Weblog

First off, I love my dad.  He’s a great guy, as anyone who knows him will attest.  There isn’t often he pisses me off to the point that I feel like I need a literary vent concerning the situation.  Tonight is one of those exceptions.

I love talking to my dad.  He gets lonely (although he’d never admit it), and a long phone call makes him feel better.  Me?  I absolutely hate talking on the phone, but for Dad, I make the exception (and for a few other good friends!).  Tonight he called, to let me know they may be a change of plans for this weekend, which is fine.  But in the course of our forty minute conversation, he tried to get me to talk negatively about three or four different relatives.

He gets these ideas in his head … like my daughter takes an hour in the bathroom in the morning (she doesn’t).  Or the “financial” situations of various people we know.  Or he “hears just fine,” even though I’m still yelling at him to get him to understand me on the phone.

For whatever reason, he gains enjoyment from yanking people’s chain.  And he does it most with me, because I won’t react back.  He’ll go on and on, trying to get me to say something.  Tonight, I did.  I defended my daughter, and then he tried to make a joke out of it.

So me hating to talk on the phone combined with his desire to just piss me off made for frustrating conversation tonight.

I’m trying to cut him a lot of slack.  He’s old.  He’s lonely.  He’s a great guy 95% of the time, and I’m reminding myself of that even as I’m writing.

But what gives old people the perceived “right” to cause havoc and mayhem, then sit back just to enjoy the show?  What sickness overtakes them that they conveniently “forget” how most of life runs, start imposing their own rules on the people that love them the most, and then turn inward so that their “reality” has very little to do with anyone but themselves?

You know, we have a lot of good conversations.  My dad is wise, and he tells great stories.  He does a lot of interesting things still, and I’m always anxious to ask him what’s going on — even though he rarely asks me the same, and acts inconvenienced at my family’s busy life.  I ‘ll ask him, “Dad, remember when I was a kid?  You were working, Mom was working … everything was spinning around all the time.”  He says he remembers, but then he’ll go on into whatever he was saying before.

I just gotta take a breath.  Nothing changes — but I wonder if it’s his passive/aggressive way of acting because we recently borrowed some money from him — money he offered and offered and offered again.  He has a way of stating his mind — regardless of who he hurts or who is spins around him.  I’m trying to be OK with it all — I’m just angry and confused right now.

But tomorrow will be another day.  I’ll let it go — I need to for my own sanity and for the love of my Dad.  Still, I wish I could figure out his “need” to cause mayhem wherever he goes …