revisionist history
So went for Turkey Day with the folks on the weekend and got into a row with my Dad. It basically started because he made a comment which i would characterize as revisionist history. He said he "knew all along" that I was gay (during my childhood and teen years). Which, apart from being utter, complete and total bullshit, is annoying.
It's annoying because my Dad was a jerk when it comes to gay stuff, during those years. He was a typical guy really, someone who was bugging him was a "fucking gearbox" when I joined the Scouts or the Army Cadets i got long lectures about watching out for certain types of fellas. In retrospect of course it's fun to joke that maybe that is why i was joining the damn Scouts, but the fact is that when you KNOW you're one of those fellows he warns you about it's not hard to get a message about the value and worth of such people.
So the row began when i called my Dad on this stuff. I told him that if he did know all along, as he claims, then he was unutterably cruel. Because to say what he said without knowing is just unfortunate, but to behave as he did to someone who he knew was gay would be just downright mean.
And from there things got a little wonky. But here we both were arguing 20 years later about what stuff 'meant' and what it means now. He accused me of making him responsible for the hurt I feel now, because of things done 20 years ago. I accused him of forgetting that the cool, relaxed, 'with it' man he is now has decided to pretend he was always like that and forgets the shit-head he could be then. it was ugly, we called a truce and he fell asleep after a lot of turkey. But where does that leave me?
I think that the reason i was so pissed off was because my way of dealing with the past is to just ignore it. Amnesia is great. Why should the 34 year old me and the 57 year old him argue about what the 34 year old him and the 11 year old me did or said to each other. Neither of those two people are here now, human memory is remarkably flawed and fragile. The fact is my Dad and I get along mostly fine, and when we argue we usually do it about what's happening now, today, not what happened 20 years ago.
No what pissed me off was that he wasn't prepared to let that history go. He decied to muck with it. He can say whatever he wants about NOW, but I get a bit cranky when someone fucks about with my history. Especially when they dredge up some of the less pleasant things that happened to me, only to dust them off and tell me how they never happened.
