We saw my father the other day, a short stopover on a road trip back from my mother's. At one point, he picks up a very large large flashlight and shines it directly into my four year old daughter's eyes.
"OW! That hurts my eyes!" Curie yells at him.
He laughs.
"Why did you do that?" she demands, clearly confused.
He doesn't know what to say for a minute, then he makes up something about trying to shine it on the wall behind her.
Curie scrunches her eyebrows in the way that she does when she doesn't believe you.
My dad is one of those men who grew up with a bunch of guys who think insults and teasing are funny. Anyone who says otherwise is "too sensitive" and quickly becomes a magnet for further teasing. Sometimes he is funny. Most of the time he is just a dick. The truth is, I don't like him very much.
He is not my biological father. He married my mother when I was six. They divorced when I was twenty six. He adopted me when I was ten. No one asked me. Not that I am still annoyed about that or anything.
My daughter is a lot like me, with one small exception: she has all the assertiveness I wish I had.
