Me and my Dad, so much Alike, but So Different Part 2

He thought he was an expert with computers

I was living with my dad and uncle in Florida, I was in my forties. We didn’t have a computer in the house. I was working as a security guard; at the time, I was working the desk at a contract mapmaking company.

Dad decided he wanted a computer, he bought a Dell PC. Dad’s co-workers, the erudite, intelligent men that they were, Assured my dad that he wouldn’t get Malware if he just used the computer for email.

I was in my Forties, and I had no sense at all, according to my dad

My dad had to be the expert, and he would not accept that his grown kids had any sense or knowledge about anything. I was relegated to emails only, a rule I broke quite often, while my dad went to porn sites, and God knows what else.

I learned quite a bit before I had my first computer

I was working at a site where people wrote code and built computers for fun. I was friendly with a lot of these folks. I picked their brains, and I learned a lot about computers before I had a computer of my own.

If dad and I would have worked together, we both would have benefitted from that, but it wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t long before the computer started to crash and freeze regularly.

He would scream my name, sometimes waking me from a dead sleep

After every crash, dad would yell for me, wanting to know what I did to his computer. It got to the point, where I didn’t use his computer at all. I would still get summoned and interrogated, but I had an airtight alibi.

Dad gave me that computer, he then had one custom-made, a computer I never touched. He ruined it when he had cancer. It spread to his brain.

I tried using it after he died, but it was of no use.

The funny thing about it, we got along fine, as long as we didn’t do anything together. It was always like that, he had no patience with his kids, especially his “Brain-damaged” oldest son.

We could talk to each other, laugh, and joke for hours, but there was no bounding through work, it was a fight instead. We talked about it often, there was a tacit agreement that we stayed out of each other’s way.

The problem was, we were too much alike, but we were different enough to rub each other the wrong way. Neither one of us liked to back down.

We learned how to build a strong relationship. I would come home in the mornings. Dad would be sitting on the side of the bed smoking.

I would sit down next to him, and we would talk for several minutes, and sometimes longer. We had finally learned to be easy with each other, but it didn’t last.

We had learned to understand each other, and we enjoyed each other’s company.

It lasted twelve years. I think of him often. I have a lot of the same mannerisms, I have his sometimes crude sense of humor, I think he might have been Dyslexic like I am.

After he died, I took a computer class, I did well in it too. After my uncle passed away, I was evicted. I drove across the country by myself to find a place to live.

Dad would have been amazed by that. I think about him and I laugh and cry. We were so much alike, but oh, so different.

Final thought:

Make peace with your parents, learn to understand them, before it’s too late.